Article 1, Section 8 - "provide... general welfare"?

I've got plenty of ammunition now!

The General Welfare Clause of the Constitution
by EUSTANCE MULLINS

To answer your question: (1) NO, (2) NO

Those clauses in Article 1;Section 8 constitute the general welfare they are addressing.

But in a more philosophical vein, general welfare is the welfare of every single person. Transfer payments are not general welfare, but instead constitute specific welfare, only benefitting the needy and not the self-sufficiant citizen.

The Socialists claim that everyone benefits from income redistribution, but that is because the purveyors of propaganda - the public school system - sides with government, and aims to indoctrinate the youth that transfer payments are in everyone's interest, when really transfer payments only benefit those who are incapable of providing for themselves and the government which panders to those who are incapable of providing for themselves.

This is why the two biggest threats today, according to the politicians, are global warming and international terrorism. These seem like such huge international problems, that we are convinced that we can't do anything about them - we are incapable as private individuals to stop the threats. This gives government license to regulate our freedom for us - since we are incapable of doing it ourselves.

I hate Socialism.

That is the single most twisted clause in the Constitution. Anyone who can read the actual text and use it justify the welfare state we now have -- with a straight face -- is either an amazing actor or seriously deranged. Either way, we don't need disingenuous mental patients in Congress or on the bench.

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The opposite of freedom is slavery; if I am 99% free, then I am part slave, which is like being "a little bit pregnant." Freedom versus slavery is a zero-sum game.

Think "general" vs. "specific" welfare. They were saying that Congress could NOT raise money except for the enumerated powers.

Basically, it's stating that the federal government can only fund things in support of the enumerated powers in Constitution and nothing else.
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James Madison on the General Welfare Clause
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Money cannot be applied to the General Welfare, otherwise than by an application of it to some particular measure conducive to the General Welfare. Whenever, therefore, money has been raised by the General Authority, and is to be applied to a particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the money requisite for it may be applied to it; if it be not, no such application can be made. - James Madison

James Madison, Report on Resolutions, in 6 WRITINGS OF JAMES MADISON, quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.

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Thomas Jefferson on the General Welfare Clause
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[O]ur tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin (June 16, 1817), in 10 WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON at 90, 91 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., 1899) quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.

Actually, the "General Welfare" clause of the Constitution acts as an ADDITIONAL RESTRICTION on the Federal Government. A proper reading indicates that the "Enumerated Powers" are only authorized insofar as their purpose is the GENERAL rather than a SPECIFIC welfare. So instead of giving the Congress carte blanche to do as it wishes (and thus rendering the rest of the Constitution moot), it imposes more hurdles to government misbehavior.

Viva Agora!
Professor Bernardo de la Paz
www.citizenduquesne.org

If you search on "general Welfare" federalist papers you will find that several of the founding fathers made it clear what their intentions were. People were arguing over this term before they even died and they had to go about re-explaining it... The intent of the term "general welfare" was just a way of saying that the "spirit of the law" was to be focused on treating everyone fairly and evenly with the powers of government.. and these specific powers within the law for the government was then immediately spelled out in the following paragraphs...

Thanks for the elaboration everyone! I was just reading the Constitution over and came across that, so I was wondering what it meant.

a few years ago spoken by a Black candidate to a Black audience. It made my head spin.

the word welfare today is not the same and does not have the same meaning when the constitution was written! ask Judge Napolitano

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison

Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were arguing this point shortly after the Constitution was ratified, and things have only gotten worse. The best counter argument to that, IMO, is the fact that there are specifically enumerated powers in the Constitution. It makes no sense for the founders to have included a clause that would for all intents and purposes destroy the enumeration of powers. Instead, the "general welfare" clause refers specifically to the powers that they so painstakingly detailed.

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions." James Madison, "Letter to Edmund Pendleton,"
-- James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791

Google "the law that never was".
Also, no. It is not constitutional for the fed to regulate education which is why Ron Paul wants to get rid of the dept of education and leave it up to the states. What Ron Paul wants is for us to be free to decide for ourselves how we want our children educated. Remember FREEDOM!

The general welfare clause is NOT an open ended invitation to do whatever Congress may choose. If it were, all other limitations and provisions of the Constititution would be meaningless, as anything could be done under the auspices of this clause. If it allows Congress to do whatever it may please, the Constitution should have ended there and not gone on to enumerate the powers of Congress, for in that case it would have given them a "blank check" by allowing them to do whatever they wanted for the "general welfare."

I believe that is true, and I think Ron Paul agrees with that. The government will levy taxes for the benefit and prosperity of America, however when taxation requires congress to write laws and disobey the constitution they differ.